From a Duvet Cover in the Park

By Emma Regev 

Hello friends!!! 

I am writing to you from a duvet cover in the park —  a weekend pastime that has become a favorite of mine. This Duvet Cover in the Park is bittersweet, though, because it’s our last day on the kibbutz! Tomorrow we’ll wake up bright and early and drive about two hours to the town of Hod Hasharon, a suburb outside of Tel Aviv. This means that we are officially transitioning from shorashim (roots), to chava (farm… there’s a historical meaning to it). What this means for us is that we’ll no longer be spending our days learning, but instead we’ll be leaders in year-round programming in our sister youth movement, Hanoar Haoved. I’m not entirely sure what this will look like, so I’ll get back to you once I’ve figured it out. What it definitely means is that I’ll be living in an entirely different house in a different place with different roommates and a real city to explore. Don’t get me wrong, I love how beautiful and quiet the kibbutz is, but it feels pretty isolating. Anyway, there's a lot of change coming my way! I’d say I’m pretty 50/50 excited and nervous. 

I’m trying to think of exciting things that have happened since I last posted. Something that definitely stands out is asefa Israelit. The direct translation of asefa Israelit is Israeli assembly, or Israeli meeting, but what it refers to in this context is a huge gathering of Israeli youth from various youth movements to commemorate the murder of Itzchak Rabin (good PM, leftist, two-state solution, democracy) and engage with values and ideologies that were central to his leadership. Actually, its only the second year that asefa Israelit has happened. For the first 20 years after the murder, there were big rallies held every year in Tel Aviv. Eventually, the youth movements (youth movements are a huge thing in Israel) realized that there are more productive ways to be engaging with Rabin’s murder and furthering his vision for democracy in Israel. A few youth movements came together and, spearheaded by Hanoar Haoved (our sister movement ;)), they created the structure of asefa Israelit. Basically, a bunch of middle and high school-aged kids from different movements and different sectors of Israeli society meet and participate in a 90-minute informal, educational discussion about current issues in Israeli society and the challenge of being a Jewish and democratic state. In one group you might find a handful of kids from tzofim, a center-left, scouting movement, some Arab and Druze kids from Hanoar Haoved, our left-wing, socialist sister movement, a couple kids from Bnei Akiva, a right-wing, religious movement, and a scattering of other kids from other youth movements. Youth in Israel tend to live their lives in a bubble, whether it’s your Arab village, your kibbutz, your city or suburb, so this event is a really cool and important way for youth to talk with and be challenged by people from different worlds and beliefs. This year, for the first time, a group of us Hebrew speakers actually got to lead some of the groups! The group I led was focused around the topic of minorities in Israel, so we talked about divisions in Israeli society and ultimately agreed on kiyum meshutaf (shared existence) as a principle to mending the current divides. Unfortunately, there weren't many dissenting opinions in my group so the discussion wasn’t incredibly meaningful, but it was still really cool to watch the kids hearing about each other’s lives and learning more in 90 minutes about these different worlds than they every had in school or in the media. 

This post has gone on for far too long, and it’s starting to get cold on this Duvet Cover in the Park, so I think I will be done for now. 

Music video coming soon :)

Duvet-cover-in-the-park selfie 

My group :)))

Selfie with Hanoar Haoved's mission statement :))